Welcome to my AIDS Walk 2026 fundraising page!

This year, I walk with a deeper sense of urgency, responsibility, and hope.

For more than three decades, the HIV/AIDS community has shaped my life — first as a young volunteer, and now as a social work educator, researcher, filmmaker, and advocate committed to preserving the stories and lessons of this movement. Since 2018, I have had the honor of serving on the Board of Directors for the National AIDS Memorial, an organization dedicated to ensuring that the activism, grief, resilience, love, and community care that define the history of HIV/AIDS are carried forward.

For more than four decades, the HIV/AIDS movement has shown us what happens when people come together in the face of fear, stigma, and institutional neglect. It is a history of loss, but also one of extraordinary courage — of communities organizing, advocating, caring for one another, and demanding that every life has value.

Today, those lessons matter more than ever.

As government rollbacks threaten funding for HIV prevention, treatment, research, and community-based programs — alongside broader attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts — we are reminded that progress is never guaranteed. At this moment, we must continue to stand up and walk beside communities under attack, protecting the programs, histories, and voices that generations of activists fought so hard to build.

This past year, I had the privilege of bringing Gert’s Boys, my documentary about caregiving, chosen family, activism, and love during the early years of the AIDS crisis, to audiences across the country. The film has now screened at more than a dozen film festivals, universities, and community events — creating spaces for remembrance, dialogue, and intergenerational learning.

On December 1, 2025 — World AIDS Day — I made Gert’s Boys publicly available with the hope that educators, students, advocates, and communities across the country will use it as a teaching tool to carry these stories forward.

You can watch the film here:
https://www.aidsmemorial.org/gerts-boys

For me, AIDS Walk has always been about honoring the past while protecting the future. I walk to remember those we lost, honor long-term survivors, support people living with HIV today, and ensure that the next generation understands that the history of HIV/AIDS is not only a story of a crisis — it is a story of community, activism, resilience, and love.

Your donation supports the National AIDS Memorial’s mission to preserve these histories, elevate voices too often left out of the narrative, fight stigma, and continue the work started by generations of activists before us.

Thank you for walking with me, remembering with me, and standing with the communities who continue to teach us the meaning of courage, care, and collective action.